"MORAL SLIP AWAY.'

Press, Volume L, Issue 14909, 24 February 1914, Page 10

"MORAL SLIP AWAY.'

REMARKS BY BISHOP CLEARY.

(STECIAX TO "TBE TRESS.") AUCKLAND, February 23. In a Lenten pastoral to the people of his diocese. Dr. Cleary, Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland, makes some timely comments on a tendency of modern times towards "moral slip away." He says:—"We stand in urgent need of moral hygiene, for instance, in the matter of reading. Its aim should be analogous to that of physical hygiene, namely, chiefly preventive and protective, to destroy or remove (as far as may be) the Jimrces of infection and the means by which it is carried to mind and heart and soul." The Bishop deals vehemently with some phases of modern fiction, and proceeds: "Against all such unwholesome literature, dramas, picture films, etc., we raise our voice in solemn warning, especially to parents. Familiarity with such things is highly calculated fo break down the barriers so long and toilfully built up by Christian sentiment and decency against Pagan license. Such, for instance, is the calculable effect, especially upon youthful and impressionable minds of the following classes of reading and dramatic matter in our time—(l) thoso tiiat treat conjugal infidelity as a jest or surround it with a halo of romance; (2) those that dress up vice in such a way as to shift the responsibility of it from tho individual, and fix it upon heredity, economic determinism, or society ; (3)* those that deal with the repulsive details of (say) the underworlds of London, Paris, New York, or other great cities, even under the scant pretence of an educational and moral purpose." His Lordship deprecates strongly that even young people, at their most imnressionable age, are at times brought into contact with bad men's and corrupt women's worst thoughts expressed in printed work or in dramatic action, and are too often allowed free acquaintance with scenes, descriptions, and occurrences which would not be permitted as topics of conversation in the domestic circle. Such an atmosphere Ls charged with deadly peril to innocence and virtue. Readers, and especially young readers, fall readily into the tone of the printed matter which they peruse. Tho cicada issues white and spotless from the dingy envelope of its larval stage, but it speedily takes the colour of tho green leaves on which it feeds. In like manner young minds that aro white and pure soon catch the complexion and tone of fhougnt c* ♦•lie literary garbage on which they feed. The fat, ruddy hue of health is speedily dissipated in an atmosphere tainted with sewage gas. So do risky or salacious book's infect the atmosphere with a subtlo dioxide in which a healthy moral tone cannot survive. Even the grosser and more revolting types of the literature of the sewer may (and do) with familiarity create a marked change in the mental and moral outlook, especially of tho young. The moral slip away in a section of fiction, drama, etc., is, Bishop Cleary says, a symptom of a deep-seated social disease of our timo, a lack of moral restraint so common that it furnishes a market for tho purveyors of evil literature. Demand and supply interact upon each other and get us into a social "vicious circle. "The radical remedy" given by tho Bishop is the elevation of popular taste and morals, the fostering of a conscience in reading, and the treatment Of the sources of contagion with preventive measures analogous to those employed by the Department of Public Health for the safeguarding of the bodily well-being of the community. It is of course, no part of the duty of the Government to teach religion or religious morals; its function is tho protection of rights, the "hindering of hindrances," the' removal of obstacles, and tho affording of facilities of environment.